Camp fire tales of lost mines and hidden treasure

CAMP FIRE TALES OF

LOST MINES and
Hidden Treasure

$3,000,000 Villa Cache
Inca Golden Sun God

Bense Lost Silver Mine

and others

CAMP FIRE TALES OF

LOST MINES and
Hidden Treasure

By Robt. G. Ferguson
CONTENTS

Introduction.

Villa's Three Million Dollar Gold Cache.

Nigger Bense' Lost Silver Mine.

The Lost Planchas de Plata Ledge.

Following "Mose."

Golden Inca Sungod.

Lost Ledge of the Lone Ace Desert Rat.

Old Pass Doubtful.

Ben Sublett's Lost Placers.

Lost Dutch Oven Mine.

Lost Arch Placers.

Maximillian's Buried Fortune.

(Copyright, 1937. by Robt. G. Ferguson, Box 1747, Tucson. Ariz. All rights
reserved, including radio and motion picture rights, except by permission.)

PRICE 50 CENTS

Introduction

By

FRANCIS FLAGG

In this engrossing collection of tales of lost mines and hidden treasure
by Mr. Ferguson, himself a discoverer of a rich gold placer he was unable
to relocate, the reader may ask himself how many of these legendary
stories are based on fact and not imagination.

But to one who has travelled on foot with a pack-burro through the
far lonely reaches of the Southwestern desert with its sweep of grease-
wood and cactii, its sudden mountain ranges with their eternal similarity
as to topographical features, the difficulty of fixing land-marks correctly
In the mind, is at once apparent.

Yet despite this, many lost mines have been rediscovered, enough of
them to prove that there is more fact than fiction back of the scores of
lost mines and buried gold stories.

Only recently an incident verifying this has come to light. In the
Western Story Magazine dated February 6, 1937 (Mines and Mining De-
partment), appears the personal account of one, F. W. Harrington, who
tells how he and some others rediscovered a lost Indian placer digging
in Butte County, California.

The account of the lost Indian placer was fantastic. According to the
current yarn, years ago a certain redskin took rich quantities of gold
out of a placer he worked. But in the course of nature, he sickened and
eventually died, after which a landslide covered up his tools, sluice box,
and all signs of his location.

This certainly seemed a story scarce worth the credence, but note
the sequence.

Harrington located the ground and actually unearthed the sluice box
and encountered pay-dirt containing coarse gold estimated at $2.00 per
pan— approximately $3,000 to the yard.

Harrington and his partners now have the rich placer diggings and
the gold in the old Indian's discovery will soon be theirs.

No — the old tales of lost mines and buried treasure cannot be lightly
dismissed. Besides being interesting stories of adventure in a vast mystery
land, they serve to show that the Golden Southwest still holds fabulous
fortunes in gold and silver for the adventurous to discover.

Villa's c&hree cMillion Dollar Qold Qache^

Eighty bars of gold bullion! Ninety pounds to the bar! That means
over three million dollars in any man's money. And all of those bars
save two — unless they have been recovered recently — are cached in the
wildest region of the Sierra Madre Mountains, below the border in Old
Mexico. The two excepted bars lie in quicksands under the turgid waters
of the Rio Grande.

Jack Shelton (for reasons the reader can readily surmise, this name
and that of Alizana used in the narrative are fictitious) told me of this
huge treasure. "At least five hundred men," he said, "lost their lives to
protect or to recover it."

About thirty years ago, Shelton's father built a railroad in Mexico,
his son, a mere youngster, being with him at the time. The father was
acquainted with Pancho Villa before he became widely known; in fact
he and his brother engaged in business transactions with that redoubtable-
to-be-chieftain. Young Shelton learned to talk Mexican-Spanish like a
native. Furthermore, he established friendly relations with Villa and
with some of the men later to win prominence as Villa's lieutenants. When
Villa finally rose in armed rebellion and took the field, writing history
with machinegun bullets and peon machetes below the international boun-
dary line, young Shelton, a college-produced metallurgist and engineer
minus the degree, managed (because of his personal acquaintance with
Villa) to get sent to Mexico to gather news material on the bloody fracas
being waged there. Shelton could write legible king's English, but he
was no finished correspondent. However, the colorful facts of the cam-
paign were what the Chicago daily wanted from him; their re-write men
could do the rest. And Shelton got them the news hot from the battle-
fields. When other war correspondents were comfortably housed fifty
miles from the scene of the conflict, Shelton was with Villa's troops in
action, getting first-hand information. Thus he cemented friendships
already made with the bandit chieftain's officers and was enabled to
make the acquaintance of still others.

Now for some time Pancho Villa met with unprecedented success.
Deserters from the ranks of other parties joined his forces. During this
period his army over-ran a good portion of northern and central Mexico
and he accumulated a vast amount of gold and silver treasure/. This
Immense wealth was generally in the form of bullion. His brother. Hipo-
lito Villa, stationed at San Antonio, El Paso, or some other one of the
cities on the American side of the border, looked after the business of
exchanging this gold and silver for ammunition and other supplies needed
by the Villa army.

Here a word as to Pancho Villa is necessary. He had received his

1 577060

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inspiration and enthusiasm at the feet of the" ill-fated Madera, the idealist
who placed the love of country and humanity above every other earthly
consideration. At the close of a talk made by Madera whilst giving him
his commission, the illiterate Villa exclaimed, "General, you have painted
a beautiful picture in my heart today!"

But the horrors and cruelties of warfare, the disappointments resulting
from the drunkenness and undependability of his brother, the disloyalty
and treachery of friends and the malignity of enemies, gradually effaced
this beautiful picture from his heart. At the battle of (JJlaya, he was a
wild, raging animal immune to any consideration for human life or of
sympathy for the suffering, and for three days made desperate onslaughts,
driving his men to frightful slaughter against the entrenched barricades
of the enemy. At close of the third day, he was completely broken and
hurriedly retreated, leaving on the field of battle, piled high in criss-cross
windrows, thousands and thousands of men and horses — the back-bone
and flower of his army. This battle was the turning point in the rebellion;
Obregon lost an arm — and Villa, the war. But when the latter retreated
from Cilaya, he had with him a large quantity of bullion in the shape
of gold bars. So much Shelton told me; and, his words were confirmed
by a prior source of information given me regarding this treasure.

Some years before, while acting as superintendent of a cotton ranch,
I had in my employ a Mexican of more than ordinary ability as a water
engineer. He was close-mouthed as to his past, though it was not this
which set him aside from the other employees since most of them were
derelict drifters from many lands with no desire to talk of yesterday
or the day before. It was his quiet dignity and air of competent strength
which inspired my respect. We became friendly, and one night after he
had had a few drinks of tequilla, he told me some things about his
past life.

He had (so he said) been one of Villa's most trusted generals, yet
nonetheless he deserted his chief, the desertion coming about in this way.
Shortly after the retreat from Cilaya, he got advance information of an
immense quantity of gold bullion coming into camp and felt certain that
Villa would place it in hiding for a time. He also felt positive that the
bandit chief would select him to convoy the treasure to its hiding place.
This he dreaded. Trusted lieutenants who buried Villa's gold had a fatal
habit of departing this world shortly thereafter. There could (he said)
be no such thing as refusing the job, if commanded to do it by Villa,
so deeming discretion the better part of valor, he stole away from the
Villa camp and made for the border. In our subsequent talks on this
subject, we wondered who convoyed the gold to its hiding place and what
ultimately, became of it. Shelton's story was the answer to this question-
Though he knew Villa had immense treasure in gold bullion, he returned
to the United States without knowledge as to what disposition had been
made of it. Then, a few years later, whilst making an engineer's report
on a mining property near Santa Rita, he was surprised to recognize in
the person of a ragged ore mucker, a man he had long supposed dead.

(4)

This was no other than General Alizana. a one time close friend and
trusted lieutenant of Pancho Villa. Shelton gripped him by the hand.
"Lord, man, I thought you got wiped out in that battle with General
Blanco I heard of. What the devil are you doing, mucking ore? Come!
knock off for the day and let's have a drink."

Over their glasses in a nearby cantina, General Alizana remarked
sadly: "As you see, senor, a change! But who regards a peon? It is some-
times well to be humble and unknown. I have been that — as the good
saint willed — waiting for fortune's wheel to turn. And now — are you
not here?"

"What do you mean?" asked Shelton. "How can I help you?"

"You can help me," said the other slowly, "and I can help you —
maybe — to millions."

Of course Shelton's curiosity was aroused, and of course he showered
the other with questions which, Alizana. being a cautious man, did not
answer all at once but only by degrees, as he felt more secure of the
other's goodwill and co-operation. Put briefly, this is the story he told
Shelton.

After the battle of Cilaya (as already noted) Villa's star was setting
and that of Obregon rising. The remnant of his army was in rags, without
munitions, and on the point of starvation; it was urgently necessary for
him to get supplies and equipment. It was then he turned the immense
treasure of gold bullion over to General Alizana, with orders for him to
transport it to the international boundary line near Texas and turn it
over to Hipolito Villa who had gone ahead to arrange for getting it over
the border into the United States, where it would purchase the sinews
of war so badly needed by the rebel chieftain. General Alizana started
north with five hundred men and the gold bullion. Only his nephew,
a captain in his command, and three others, knew what the wagons car-
ried. Unfortunately, en route to the border, he encountered a much
stronger Federal force under the command of General Blanco. Defeat
was inevitable, there was the gold to consider, so Alizana turned the com-
mand over to his second in command with orders to wage a running
fight with Blanco and hold him in check as much as possible; then he
and his nephew fled to the mountains with the wagon-train of bullion.

Far into the lonely fastnesses of the rugged wilderness they penetrated,
turning and twisting to hide the trail. Finally, they hid the gold. Then
they marked the spot. Not content with this, having no further need for
the wagons, they hung wagon-wheels on mesquite trees for some distance,
to better guide them to the gold should they ever return.

Meantime, in their absence, Alizana's small command of five hundred
men had been annihilated by General Blanco. Realizing that Villa was
done for, that the game was up. he and his nephew disguised themselves
and made for the great republic to the north. Recognition would have
meant a firing squad, without benefit of manana. but they were lucky
enough to reach the border with bleeding feet and half-starved. Once
in the United States, they went to work as peons.

(5)

As Alizana had foreseen, Villa's cause was lost; the rebel chief made
terms with his enemies and retired to a ranch, where he was ultimately
shot down from ambush by Government Deputy Jesus Barrazas. Under
the circumstances, the two exiles felt that the gold was theirs and plotted
and planned how to go back and recover it. But death took the Nephew
(he was drowned in the Pueblo, Colorado, flood of 1922) before this could
be accomplished. Alizana was now alone and knew that he must have
help from some source, if he were to succeed in his designe, hence his
willingness to confide in and trust Shelton.

"I raised five hundred dollars," said Shelton, "and we went to El Paso
and hired three men, purchasing a supply of picks and shovels/ ropes
and other needed equipment. The men had no idea where they were
going, of course. Two of them were left to guard our supplies placed in
a cave and to watch the movements of the border patrol."

Before this, of course, Shelton and Alizana had made other arrange-
ments and enlisted additional help. Two vaqueros from below Del Rio,
along with the third man hired at El Paso, swelled their numbers to five
as they crossed the border before daylight on a memorable morning.

For three days they rode hard over a dry, rugged desert, keeping
well to the east of the Bolson-de-Mapimi. They skirted the foothills of
the towering Sierra Madres until they reached that one of them known
as Burro Mountain. Here they encountered traces of that three days'
battle which left the bones of over five hundred men to bleach under
desert skies. Two days later they came to the spot where Alizana and
his nephew had burned the last of their wagons on the return trip from
hiding the gold; and shortly thereafter found some of the wagon-wheels
hung on limbs of mesquite trees at strategic points along the old route.

The hearts of the treasure-seekers leapt in them with exultation. It
appeared as if they were going to find everything exactly as the General
had enthusiastically decsribed it. Finally they reached a point where a
canyon broke the contour of the Sierra Madres.

The General had assured Shelton that this was the gulch up which
the heavy wagons with their almost exhausted horses had been driven
on that eventful day five years previous to this attempt to revisit the spot.

A watering hole was found, with an abundance of grass for their
animals. Where a large encino tree cast welcome shade they pitched
camp. As the nondescript bunch of helpers ate lunch, Alizana and Shelton
took advantage of the interval to go ahead and survey the land. It was
necessary to plan how they were going to recover the bars of gold bullion
and pack them out of the mountains without, at the same time, revealing
to the other men the location of the cache and the amount of treasure
in it. They left camp with sufficient supplies to enable them to spend
the night in the mountains. Suddenly they heard hoofbeats other than
those made by their own horses. Then rounding a bend came trotting
a score or more of khaki-clad Mexican soldiers, their broad sombreros
glistening in the sunlight. The leader of this troop called out sharply
in Spanish, "Who goes there?"

(6)

"Citizens of the United States," Shelton cried instantly, in the same
tongue; but even as he cried out, the commandant gave the order and
his men fired. Almost as promptly, General Alizana raised his gun. The
commandant reeled and fell from his horse. Then the adventurers had
wheeled their own mounts and were riding for their lives, firing back
as they fled. Jumping several arroyos, they came into the main gulch.
Shelton felt a sharp sting in his left arm and it went numb. Then, just
as he came to a turn in the canyon where a deep gulch led off to the
left, the impact of a bullet pierced his left heel and his horse fell heavily,
crushing the wounded leg against the grinding gravel in the bottom of
the gulch. Well was it for him that his horse fell in the gulch. The
whooping soldiers passed without stopping and went thundering down
the canyon in pursuit of Alizana. He heard one of them shout, "We'll
come back for the gringo later!"

The horse was dead. The bullet that wounded Shelton's heel had
found its heart. He crawled down the deep gulch, off to the left, and
so continued for perhaps three miles before coming out of the canyon
at a place where, by an almost superhuman effort, he managed to climb
over a cactus-covered mesa into another small canyon or gulch. For what
he reckoned thirty-six hours, he lay hidden ere venturing into open
country.

How he ever made the Rio Grande is one of those eternal mysteries.
It took him a week of nightmare torture. The two men were still at the
cave on the Texas side of the river. From the cave he managed to reach
Deming, New Mexico, where he got medical treatment. Thus, the first
attempt to recover Villa's gold bullion ended disastrously.

But despite this initial failure, Shelton was more eager than ever
to return to the Sierra Madres and make another effort at unearthing
the treasure. He looked around for a partner to interest in the enterprise,
but before he approached any one. to his huge surprise General Alizana
reappeared on the scene. Shelton had given him up for dead. But though
he had been captured by his pursuers and tortured with refined cruelty,
the erstwhile Villa lieutenant had managed to escape while the soldiers
were conducting him to their chief — and to certain death. His spirit was
still unbroken and he readily agreed to guide another expedition which
Shelton again financed.

As before, men were secured at El Paso — this time two. A short
distance above Del Rio, they established camp. This time Shelton decided
he would stay at the rendezvous and study the habits of the border patrol
both sides of the river, whilst the General and the two helpers went to
the Sierra Madres to bring back two to four of the gold bars.

This time the trip and the job of uncovering the hidden gold was
accomplished with little or no trouble. Leaving his two helpers at the
Encino tree where the party had pitched camp before, Alizana went alone
to the granite gash where the gold lay and, with native ingenuity and
strenuous efforts, succeeded in hoisting out two bars of bullion, which
he then wrapped in burlap and brought back on mules. In due time,

(7)

the expedition arrived on the Mexican side of the border river and the
bullion was secreted in a shed. Shelton crossed the river to inspect the bars.
He saw the neatly stitched leather covering outside a plain canvas bag
which encased each precious bar. He saw the stamp of identification
imbedded on the ends of the bars. Again wrapping the bullion in its
coverings of burlap, they awaited the hour of midnight. At that hour,
Shelton gave the signal from the north bank of the Rio Grande and
Alizana and the two helpers — the General leading, followed by a helper
on a pony leading by a rope one of the pack mules carrying both bars
of gold in saddle pockets, followed by the other helper — attempted to
cross the boundary line.

With as much silence as possible, they entered the waters of the
river, the last barrier between the two treasure hunters and fortune.

But alas and alas! though Shelton had studied the habits of the
border patrol both sides of the river, and proved more or less correct as
to the whereabouts of the American guard, he woefully miscalculated the
time at which the patrol on the Mexican side would appear on the scene.
As the treasure traine with its escorts — those two gold bars were valued
at $35,000 each, remember! — approached the middle of the river, the splash-
ing of the waters by the hoofs of a rear animal attracted the attention
of an inopportune Mexican guardsmen. This worthy immediately opened
fire. The General — perhaps one of the best shots ever to come out of
old Mexico and not slow to exercise his talent — returned the fire with
deadly effect.

Whether the Mexican guard's first shot struck the mule carrying
the gold will never be known, but when the smoke of battle cleared
away, both the helpers and their mounts had vamozed, whilst the mule
bearing the precious cargo was lost in the quicksands beneath the swirling
waters below the ford.

This time the General was wounded in the arm, but he and Shelton
managed to escape without detection. So the second attempt to salvage
Pancho Villa's gold bullion ended as had the first — in disaster.

Two years later, General Alizana felt the urge to return to his native
haunts. Despite a disguise, he was recognized and taken to a place called
Villa Ahumado, where he was 'dobie-walled. It is said the General met
his fate with stoical resignation. Thus ended the only man who knew
the abiding place of Pancho Villa's hidden gold — the only man with the
exception of Shelton.

Now a word as to the topography of the country in which the Villa
treasure lies hidden.

Just east of the waste of blistering sands known as the Llanos de
Giantes lies the terrible Bolson de Mapimi — the yellow floor of a van-
quished dead sea where, for scores of kilometers, no water exists and
the only sound of life is the flapping of vulture wings — vultures circling
overhead as if calculating how long it will be before they can gather
around a festal board.

Then to the east of this drear expanse rises the foothills of the Sierra

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Madre Mountains, and in a cleft in a rock of one of these foothills known
as Burro Mountain — covered with cone jo weed — lies the gold bullion hid
by the General

This is a wild, weird country, and the desert is strewn at frequent
intervals with the skeletons of stout-hearted adventurers whose bones
apparently never decay, but always seem to admonish the wayfarer. Be-
ware, beware!

Migger ^Bense' Lost Silver oWline^

About the year 1878, his term of enlistment having expired, a colored
soldier by the name of Benson was mustered out of the service at old
Fort Huachuca. Nigger Bense, as he was familiarly known, was a typical
old-time Southern darkie who had served Uncle Sam in the army for a
good many years. Whilst doing so, a great deal of his time had been
spent as a member of the Border Patrol, scouting long the line between
Arizona and Mexico, to the west of Nogales, with his headquarters at
old Fort Huachuca.

This was about the beginning of the hectic days that have gone down
in the history of the great Southwest as the "Heldorado Days" of old
Tombstone. From a very small village, Tombstone grew to be the center
of a seething mass of humanity, a city of world-wide reputation and
numbering, over a considerable boom period when some of the richest
silver mines in the country were being worked full-blast, a population
of at least fifteen thousand as tough hombres as every handled drill or
toted side-arms.

As soon as he was discharged from the army service, Nigger Bense
went to the reckless roaring gambling town of Tombstone. He was a
wonderfully agile and graceful dancer. He would go from saloon to
gambling hall and from one resort to another, performing his own special
rendition of jigg dancing, a solo performance something akin to the tap
dancing of a later period. As he danced, the money-mad miners and
prospectors would toss quarters, dollars, and even gold eagles, at his feet,
and Nigger Bense would stoop and gather in the coins without losing a
step in his rhythmical cavorting. He had considerable of the gambling
blood in his veins and, in order to give the game more interest, made it
a rule that whenever through some inadvertency or awkardness he did
miss a step whilst reaching for the money, all of the money at that time
lying on the floor would be tossed back to their donors, along with double
the amount of their individual antes. As Nigger Bense always managed
to miss a step occasionally, the spirit of adventure was whetted and crowds
followed him from place to place, throwing their money at his feet with
the hope of being lucky enough to cash in on a winning mis-step.

At the time Nigger Bense checked out of the army at Fort Hauchuca
another colored soldier known as Nigger Bob also received his honorable
discharge. For a good many years he had served with Nigger Bense on

(•)

the border patrol and they were good friends. After going to Tombstone,
Nigger Bense confided to Nigger Bob the fact that while serving as a
border patrolman he had, through the friendship of an old Yaqui Indian,
learned the location of a fabulously rich silver deposit, what he called
a mine that was a mine, one that would develop enough silver, as he
expressed it, to pay the national debt. However, he would tell no one
where this rich silver deposit was located. He did tell Nigger Bob that
he would make out some sort of will or document, giving explicit direc-
tions how to find the mine, in case of his death, and leave it where
Nigger Bob could get possession. However, Nigger Bob died with his
boots on before ever receiving such a paper. So far as is known this
was the only gesture Nigger Bense ever made towards passing out in-
formation regarding location of his bonanza.

Immediately after telling friends about his knowledge of the fab-
ulously rich silver mine, Nigger Bense outfitted himself with a three-
burro pack traine and started alone for his old stamping grounds along
the border, below Fort Huachuca. No one paid much attention to his
absence as it was thought that Nigger Bense knew more about dancing
and drinking booze than he did about prospecting. But in about ten
days, to every one's huge astonishment, he returned to Tombstone with
three hundred pounds or the richest silver glance ever shown in that
hell-roaring metropolis. Old timers who saw the stuff agreed that it was
the richest, or the nearest to pure silver they had ever seen taken out
of the ground in this part of the world. (At least they assumed that
Nigger Bense had taken it out of the ground; but what particular piece
of ground and where located no one knew or could guess). i

Assays made by the purchasing banker showed the metal to be almost
virgin silver. This first three hundred pound load brought Nigger Bense
$500. But the banker, a fellow by the name of Woods, made a great
deal more out of the transaction than did Nigger Bense. Once every
two months, over a period of three years, Nigger Bense drove his pack
traine of three burros into the hills and returned from every such trip
wtih approximately the same quantity of silver glance, for which he
received the same amount of cash from banker Woods.

Naturally Nigger Bense became a most popular fellow around Tomb-
stone. Hotel-keepers, bar-tenders, show-girls, in fact everybody in town,
showered him with favors of various kinds. He was scarcely allowed to
spend any of his easily earned cash, which seemed a small fortune to
him, after his first trip to the mysterious silver ledge down near the
border. Money soon became to Nigger Bense nothing more than a pile
of coin to stack up at one corner of a gambling table; something to take
the place of the red and blue chips in the great game of life. He con-
tinued to dance for the edification of the tenderfeet and for the amuse-
ment of the gamblers, miners and prospectors who frequented the public
houses of this wild raw city of the wilderness. And, on occasion, Nigger
Bense was known to indulge in the flowing bowl.

"Hah! now we have him! He will give himself away when liquor

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loosens his tongue." Thus thought some of the wild adventurers willing
to eliminate the color-line if only they could get old Nigger Bense drunk
enough to tell them where his silver mine was located. But it so hap-
pened that when Nigger Bense got drunk, he also got "tight." The drunker
he got, the tighter he got.

Of course frequent attempts were made to follow him on his trips
and he was trailed beyond Fairbanks around to the north of Fort Hua-
chuca and then, in a southwesterly direction, toward the old Tumacacori
Mission, the very region in which so many fabulously rich strikes of
silver ores have found their burial places during the centuries since the
Spaniards first came into this country, but here, he invariably eluded
his pursuers.

The sheriff who, with his deputies, maintained order in and around
Tombstone during the Heldorado Days was a man named Slaughter. His
principal deputy is given credit for once having arrested Nigger Bense
on some trivial charge. Perhaps he put a few shots into the town's light-
ing system or indulged in some other such playful prank. With Nigger
Bense safely esconsed in jail, this arm of the law conceived the bright
idea of making him reveal the location of his silver mine. Seemingly he
had little difficulty in extracting a promise from him to give truthful
directions in exchange for freedom. But once free. Nigger Bense devel-
oped a sudden loss of memory and insisted he could not recollect making
any such promises.

About this time it was known that Banker Woods had a confidential
chat with Nigger Bense and it was thought that he strongly advised
him against taking in partners or revealing the location of his mine to
any one. The banker was known to have made considerably more out
of the shipments or ore brought in by Nigger Bense than he could pos-
sibly hope to make from the same ore mined and sent to market by a
well organized group of business men. Therefor he was interested in
keeping Nigger Bense a near-broke good spender with a source of plenty
available that only required a periodical trip of ten to fourteen days
to contact.

But finally came the day when Nigger Bense did the last tap dancing
he was ever fated to do in the dance-halls and bars that straggled along
the main stem of Tombstone. "Ah'm goin'," he said, and outfitted him-
self for a journey to the mysterious location of his rich silver ledge.
Envious eyes followed him as he gaily prodded his burros out of town;
many watched and waited for his return, among them Banker Woods;
but the days passed, and the weeks and months, and he did not return:
Nigger Bense was never again seen in the haunts of men.

What happened to him? No one knows for certain. But enough
evidence exists to make people believe that Nigger Bense was returning
to Tombstone with his three burros heavily loaded with rich silver glance
when disaster befell him. Tracks showed that the burros had turned
west instead of coming the regular route eastward to Tombstone.

Undoubtedly the men who sought to trail him to his lost silver mine

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failed to do so but way-laid and murdered him on his return trip and
stole his ore.

So the old timers believed, and such was the opinion of Mart Taylor,
pioneer ranchman of the Tombstone country, who told me the story.

"Out there," he said, pointing southward to where rugged mountains
and lonely canyons make terra incognita along the Mexican border; "out
there, somewhere, lies Nigger Bense' fabulously rich silver glance ledge
for some lucky prospector to find."

But to date, no prospector has.

^he Lost Tlanchas de 'Tlata Ledger

The Southwest is glamorous with its tales of lost gold and silver
mines. Long before the coming of the Jesuit fathers, and of Spanish
adventurers into Northern Mexico and Southern Arizona (the Pimeria
Alta of the Spaniards), the natives worked many mines. Yaqui Indians
knew of rich mineral deposits and the Spanish invaders learned of their
location from them. The missions established by Father Kino at Guevavi
and Tumacacori (according to Hinton) engaged extensively in mining,
using Indian labor. But the strictness of mission life, coupled with the
excesses of the Spanish adventurers whom the padres sought vainly to
control, led to many Indian uprisings. Those uprisings forced the missions
to abandon mining and drove the white invaders out of Pimeria Alta for
many years, during which time the Indians filled up many valuable work-
ings and destroyed landmarks so that the locations of them were irre-
trievably lost. Among the mines so lost was the fabulously rich silver
mine called by the Spaniards the PLa-nchas de Plata (Plates of Silver).

Probably long before the Spaniards' time, Aztecs worked the Plan-
chas de Plata for silver to gild their temples and to fashion into utensils
and barbaric adornments. Ore of incalculable richness had doubtless
been taken from the mine by them, and yet, seemingly, an inexhaustible
store remained for the adventurers and to flow into the coffers of the
Spanish crown. It beggars the imagination to try and compute how much
free silver this mine held (and still holds.)

During the short period it was in possession of the Spaniards, sheets
of pure native silver were stripped from the walls of the mine. The
sheets were described as being flexible when first mined but soon hard-
ened on exposure to the elements. Two of these sheets call for special
mention. I almost hesitate to set down what the Spanish accounts state
was their official weight. One weighed 149 arrobas, and the other 21
arrobas. When I tell you that an arroba is equal to 25 pounds, you will
grasp the magnitude of the statement. The sheet said to weigh 149 arrobas
(3725 lbs.) had to be reduced in a furnace before the crude transportation
facilities of that day could handle it. The approximate amount of silver

(12)

glance extracted by the Spaniards in the short time they worked the
mine before the Indians drove them out, is put at 400 arrobas; or in
other words, came to the stupendous weight of about ten thousand pounds
or five tons.

I am told that in "An Essay on the Mineral Resources of Northern
Sonora", by Don Manuel Retez, written shortly after the Spaniards worked
the mine, that mention is made of the lost Planchas de Plata. Bancroft
alludes to it in his history of Mexico and Arizona and I have already
said that Hinton does. And of course there are the old documents in
the historical archives of Mexico City. When Count Rousseth de Bourbon
made his celebrated trip of exploration into Sonora, it was to search for
the Planchas de Plata, and for yet another silver mine said to lie several
leagues to the south of it.

According to Spanish sources, the location of the lost Planchas de
Plata mine was within a league east of the junction, 31% degrees north,
111% degrees west, of Greenwich.

A story said to be based on the statement of an old Yaqui Indian
considered truthful, is to the effect that the Planchas de Plata was about
four leagues southwest of old Tumacacori mission. However that may
be, no white man's eye, since the Spaniards fled before the attacks of
Indians in those early days, has seen the lost Planchas de Plata.

No white man's eye. But did a black man's? Was the lost Planchas
de Plata the source of that fabulously rich silver glance Nigger Bense
brought periodically into Tombstone on the backs of his plodding burros
and sold to Banker Woods? It is impossible to say. Only the similarity
of the ore to that mined by the Spaniards, its unbelievable richness,
coupled with the fact that it was found in the same vicinity as the lost
Planchas de Plata, would incline one to think so.

Nigger Bense is dead, his secret buried with him; dust for centuries
now have been the bones of those Indians who filled up the mine and
obliterated all trace of its existence. But some day — almost inevitably —
some lone prospector, some group of mining men or explorers making
their way through those lonely hills and canyons near the international
boundary line, will find the fabulous lost Planchas de Plata, as perhaps
did Nigger Bense.

I wonder who those lucky men will be.

following "oMosd;"

I had spent part of the winter camped on the old La Paz Placers, to
the northwest of Quartzsite, Arizona. In the glamorous gold-rush days
back in '49, many overland pioneers travelling via Tyson Wells passed
directly over, or within a few miles of the rich gold placer sands of this
region, without suspecting that they were passing up fabulous fortunes
in yellow metal.

(13)

The La Paz placers were discovered by that mysterious fur-hunting
mountain man, Paulino Weaver, a decade or so before the turn of the
nineteenth century (about 1862), and soon thereafter this region became
a beehive of placer miners and camp-followers. It is estimated that,
at the peak of its boom, ten thousand miners were sifting its rich dirt,
and taking out plenty of gold — some as high as $100 per day. At a later
period, the same ground was gone over again and again with dry wash-
ers of various kinds and sufficient gold recovered to exchange for frijoles
and other necessary living requirements of those who lived the free and
easy life of the gambuzino. Perhaps with more perfect methods and the
application of, as yet, undiscovered chemical and electrical processes,
larger fortunes than were taken out in the olden days may be recovered
from those desert sands. However, it is not my intention to write a
treatise on early day mining or the merits of modern methods of gold
extraction. I am only endeavoring to relate the story of an enormously
rich placer that I discovered and lost in this region and to set the stage,
as it were, for those readers not acquainted with the locality, and to
make it clear that, past, present or future, this is gold country where
desert rats have discovered and lost fortunes, and that in following
"Mose" I was taking a legitimate chance on striking it rich.

During my sojourn on the La Paz placers I had made the acquaintance
of a typical old-time prospector. Sun, sand, and snow had weathered
his tough body to the consistency of gnarled oak. Fifty years had he
prospected the gold fields of North America; fifteen of those years in
Alaska, hunting the precious metal from White Horse Canyon to the Arctic
Circle. Of late years, however, his prospecting had been confined to
the land of the wheezy whine of the dry washers.

In confidental chats around the winter campfire, he told me of a
wonderfully rich gold-vein he claimed to have seen some two hundred
fifty miles to the north of La Paz. After endless discussions as to the
possibility of developing his discovery, I decided to take a chance and
join the old fellow on a trip to the lode.

Spring was beginning to advance on the desert. From day to day
the sun shone warmer and numerous wild bees began to suck honey from
the catclaw blooms. At such times I always start suffering from what
the highbrows call wanderlust, but for which there is a homelier name
— itchy feet. "All right," I said to the old prospector, "it's a bargain.
Fifty-fifty on what we strike. Let's get going." We struck hands to seal
the bargain and set the day. I

Aside from his meagre camp equipment, "Mose" was the chief pos-
session and pride of the old prospector, and a unique burro he was. His
hide was mouse-colored, his ears as long as those of a jack-rabbit, and
he generally stood with his eyes closed and a deceptive air of humble-
ness; but woe-betide the unwary dog or stranger that too closely ap-
proached his hind quarters. I have heard of men who would share their
last crust with a favorite dog; but I am sure the old prospector would

(14)

have given this ornery mountain »anary Qf his all of the crust and gone
without himself.

It was a clear sunny morning when we started, Mose loaded down
with cooking utensils, bedding, tnpping outfit, and a complete hand-
operated dry washer — all arranged it various vantage points on his stolid
anatomy.

Two roads led out of camp, b>th meandering along in a northerly
direction. "Well," I queried, "whiih do we take?"

To my astonishment the old ppspector replied that he didn't know.
Since he had repeatedly assured me in our talks that he could go
directly to the rich lode, I naturp*y Vegan to experience some feelings
of misgiving which I probably nude verbal. He then explained that
once upon a time he had clear ed up n acre of mesquite brush on Mose's
phlegmatic hide persuading him thathe was wrong in his desire to take
a certain left-hand road. Mose w.s finally convinced and proceeded
to the right; but to his disgtst, thf old prospector later learned that a
rich strike had been made £ short distance ahead on the road Mose
had wanted to dent with his four hooves. Since when, he explained,
he left the choice of roads tc Mose. After a few sarcastic remarks I
laughed and decided that majbe the old fellow had a good reason for
deferring to the burro's guidaice. "Okay," I said. "As long as he heads
in the general direction of th< North Star I'm with you."

It was about noon of thf second day out that Mose landed us in
the midst of as strange a performance as the eyes of a white man
could rest upon, the cremator ceremonies accorded a deceased member
of a certain well-known Indj.n tribe.

The funeral pyre was biilt of mesquite poles, thickly criss-crossed
with arrow weeds, to the heigit of four feet. This pyre was so constructed
that the corpse placed atop o' it would fall to the center when it collapsed.
The Indians gathered aroui/i the pyre were in full tribal regalia, with
an abundance of feathers '.nd gaudy-colored paints. At a signal from
the chief a torch was appjed to the pyre and the whole band of mourn-
ers gave voice to a weird,' > ailing chant which grew louder and louder
as the flames mounted higher The frenzied wailing and dancing reached
a climax when the pyre col .psed and the corpse dropped. According to
Indian theology, this is thonoment when the spirit of the dead leaves
the body and makes its flijjt to the Happy Hunting Grouids.

What ceremony, if any followed the collapse of the funeral pyre,
I do not know, since Mose rrew restless and insisted that we be again
on our way in the general irection of Old Polaris.

It would be too tedious o give every detail of our trek northward.
We paralleled the Colorado ver to the west of us, roundei some foot-
hills to the east, and at time: made our way through low pisses. After
a few days of such going, th< old prospector became upset aid irritable
over his failure to locate a crtain watering place he had vsited years
before and felt certain of fin<ing again. That night an oys:er was no
dumber as he brooded over ou* water tins and estimated how much of

4

the precious liquid still remained therin. Bright and early next morn-
ing we set out, husbanding the scan' supply left us. Darkness forced
us to halt and make a dry camp. Al our five gallon cans were empty;
only the canteens contained a little fcr coffee and to whet the gullets of
the burros. To my huge surprise tie old prospector (whom I would
have thought inured to such mishaps) went to pieces and was so nervous
that he could scarcely drink his cofee.

Now, before striking camp, a mle or so behind on the back trail,
I had noticed against the nose of a mesa or cone projecting from the
hills a splendid-looking formation fo placer. A handful of clay picked
up at this point had gold in it. 2^jJ; night I was restless, what with
thinking of this likely spot, and by tie time day dawned I had decided
to go back and inspect it more closVly. I told the old prospector about
the gold in the handful of clay and kked him to put off breaking camp
for two hours until I returned from Wy -panning more of such dirt. We
had hot words over this. He said I vas a crazy tender-foot for wanting
to do such a thing with water practcallj gone; that the sands of the
desert were strewn white v/ith the bones of such fools as myself who
took time out for just one more look vhen they ought to be hitting
it for a water hole; lhat if I wanted to commit suicide it was nothing
to him, go ahead snd be blankety-blanled. However, I was certain
he would wait for me the necessary tine since he had done so on
request before; besides, I really expectec to be back within the hour
and felt that sixty minutes would scarcely strain his patience to the
snapping point. Therefor I ignored his insulting and torrid flow of
language and went back and made a test of one pan of dirt. It took
some time to do this since the clay was toigh and difficult to pulverize;
but I persisted until I panned it down, and hen — there it was — surpassing
my fondest hopes — dozens of glittering nug/ets rolling in the bottom of
the pan.

Think of it. Gold! Loose nuggets of le precious metal. Gold!
which buys power and luxury and feminine viiresses, with which kings
and emperors fashion imperial crowns. Fot pHe time being I forgot all
about the cross old man, the arbitrary Mosd and about the scarcity of
water; forgot about the desert, my precariouj position — about everything
but the realization of this enormous wealti within my grasp; weatlh
that would enable me to do so many things^ wanted to do for myself
and others. I dont think a hop-head ever hall a more rapturous halluci-
nation than had I for a few delirious monmts; then my sober senses
returned. I must hurry back to camp at r ice, acquaint the old pros-
pector with ny strike, inform him that wd Would work this discovery
instead of the lode he remembered somewiere to the north. So with
a lively sense of passing time I hit the cam»ward trail — only to discover
that Mose md the old prospector had vanished, that nothing remained
of the cam? but an empty bean can and soAe grey wood-ash! And worst
of all, the little water had vanished too?' In a frenzy of cold fear I
dodged in and out among the creosote boshes, the mesquite and sage.

/

J

sometimes going forward sometimes back, hunting signs of the course
taken by the departed ones, but for a long time in vain. Then I stumbled
on the traiL The old man had a peculiar crack in the sole of one shoe
with ridged leather to each side and imprints of this I found at intervals
where there was soft earth and sand. My first unreasoning fear left
me and 1 became quite stoical and composed.

But as day wore on and I followed those few trail signs hour after
hour with no glimpse of Mose or the old man, fear gripped me again
and I could not restrain hysterical sobs nor stop the scalding tears from
washing down my cheeks, though these latter I sought to prevent for
fear the shedding of them would sap my body of what little moisture
it possessed and so contribute to my undoing.

Terror lent me false strength. I kept going, most of the time at a
run, and that night, just before sundown, I ran right into the outfit I
so frantically sought. Not even gold, mountains of gold, gold beyond
the wildest dreams of avarice looked fairer to me at that moment than
did the sight of the old prospector and his ornery burro. The old pros-
pector had discovered a water-hole, filled all cans, cooked supper, and
was peacefully smoking his villainous-smelling pipe as if nothing un-
toward had happened. He merely remarked that he had made a big pot
of coffee for me!

I said nothing. What was the use? But I revelled in that coffee
and rolled into my blankets, too tired to feel anything but the most
elementary sensations.

The next morning we got an early start and shortly thereafter
reached the town of Topock on the Santa Fe railroad. There I informed
the old prospector that I made him a free and ungrudging gift of my
burro, utensils and bedding, and wished him goodluck and a long good-
bye. Then I caught the first train heading for the big city and the
bright lights where my job was demanding my return after an extended
vacation, a job very necessary to the rehabilitation of my finances, and
not until my next vacation did I attempt to go back to the rich placer
I had found. But everything looked so strange and different in the
desert, I quit in despair.

I have upbraided myself a thousand times for not having sat right
down on the spot at the moment of discovery and making a rough sketch
showing direction of all mountain peaks and of permanent land-marks.
I did not realize at the time that there is a terrible sameness in the
general sweep of desert country and that the mind is of all things the
most undependable to rely on in trying to re-trace one's footsteps where
hills, mesas, canyons seem to repeat themselves with monotonous reg-
ularity. But it is of no avail to upbraid myself now.

Yet it is out there — the placer I discovered — possibly millions in
gold — waiting for some one luckier than myself to stumble upon again.
If any one wants to take a chance on being that luckier person I can
tell him this:

It's in a tough reddish yellow clay on the nose of a mesa about
one and a half days by burro southeast of Topock, Arizona.

(17)

©he Qolden Inca Sun Qod

How many people know that in the state of Texas, on the bank erf
the Brazos River, under seven veras of earth, a fabulous amount of
gold lies buried? This immense cache includes the sacred, solid gold,
jewel-bedecked image of an Inca Sun God, and other articles of solid
gold. The curious may ask themselves how such a treasure ever reached
what was centuries later to be the Lone Star State. By this hangs a
tale so strange, so mixed with the romance of war and conquest, so
colored with the glamor and rhythm of weird religious rites and strange
customs, as to beggar the imagination.

The story of the lost Sun God is as authentic as the first report
of the discovery of the Grand Canyon. Early Spanish explorers located
this natural wonder of grandeur and beauty; but despite that, over a
long period of a hundred thirty-six years, its existence was regarded
as a myth.

As for the romantic story of the Sun God, it serves to show that
man will forsake all, endure all, and continue to fight on and struggle
to the breaking point through trackless jungles, over high and rugged
mountains, and contend with the most frightful hardships, for GOLD,
for the magic metal which can exchange for any necessity or luxury;
and that can purchase any thrill the world affords, or the brain and
heart of man desire — save two.

The beginning of it all goes back to the time when the great chief,
Huayna Capac, ruled over the empire of the Incas. This was before
coming of Pizarro and Almagro, the Spanish conquistadores. The Incas
were sun worshippers and believed that all life and vitality came from
the sun and that at death the soul went to the mansions of glory which
existed in the regions of the sun. They held that the nuggets of gold
so lavishly distributed in the rich virgin placers of Peru were the tears
of the Sun God shed over the errors of his earthly children. Gold,
therefor, was a sacred thing to the Incas and not an article of commerce
or a medium of exchange. The Incan form of government was an ab-
solute monarchy mildly administered, the history of which fades back
into the dim dawn of tradition. The antiquity of the empire is well
authenticated by the painted figures in the main Temple of the Sun
at the sacred city of Cuzco. Class lines were strictly drawn, and the
rights and privileges of each class or order were clearly defined. The
peon type had little and expected little except a big time on fiesta
days and a clinging faith that there would be a great day in the morn-
ing in the mansions of the sun.

Now at the time the story opens, the great Inca Huayna Capac was
growing old, his god, the sun, no longer warmed his blood as of yore
and he gave his thoughts over to the inexorability of death, and to
reflections of the eternal life ef which death was but the gateway. From
the royal patio he watched the setting sun, its lingering rays touching

(18)

the two gorgeous feathers of the sacred bird, caraquenque, which rose
from the llautu swathing his brows.

He thought of his empire, which had been greatly extended and en-
larged under his reign, of his deeds of conquest and benevolence, of
his warehouses filled with grain and woven cloths and all manner of
rich merchandise, and his heart was glad within him because of the
teeming plenty he would leave to his people and to the two sons between
whom he had decided to divide his empire. Surely no Inca before him
had ruled so wisely or accomplished so much, but now it was time to
put his house in order. He called to his servants and bade them make
ready for a feast, and he also summoned the damsels of his seraglio,
the most beautiful and younger of whom danced before him, a ritual
dance at once lascivious and holy; but none was slimmer or more graceful
in the dance, or lovelier to look upon, than the Inca's favorite, Juari,
and for the first time his heart grew heavy at the thought that soon
he would see her no more or thrill to her tender caresses. But this
heaviness of spirit he banished with the heady fermented liquor of
the maguey and the maize. At his command she came to him where
he reclined on the royal couch, the gorgeously colored curtains of fine-
woven vacuna were drawn, and the night was theirs, and love.

But after all the Inca was an old man and the liquor loosened his
tongue. He boasted of his youth and glory, of how he had brought the
northern Empire of Quito under his sway, of the temples he had built
in honor of the Sun God, and of the golden images he had placed
therein. And then, under the spell of Juari's magnetic charm, he told
her THE GREAT SECRET, known to but a few priests and himself
alone, that the huge golden image raised to the sun and placed in the
Paquen Caucha, the main temple of the sun, had secretly been conveyed
to a hidden place years before, for safe-keeping, and one constructed
of wood heavily veneered with gold set in its place. And he told her
the exact whereabouts of the hidden image.

When the sun rose once more to dissipate the darkness of his world
and to veil his sister the moon with celestial brightness, the Inca was
carried forth to greet the rising god in the prescribed ceremonial fashion.
Then realizing that his time was short, he caused his chief officers and
nobles, together with the priests, to assemble before him, and in the
presence of all he made known his will and divided the mighty Incan
Empire between the two sons, Huascar and Atahaulpa. Huascar had
been born to him by his legal wife, and Atahualpa by his favorite con-
cubine, a daughter of the last reigning monarch of Quito. To the first,
he gave the south half of the empire, and to the second, the north
half. In like manner he divided the grain in the warehouses, the woven
cloths and the jewels of great price. All that he possessed, down to
the regalia of the court and the inmates of the seraglio, he divided, end
then he covered his face and was carried to an inner chamber where,
some time after, he passed away.

Now for the time being the two brother princes were well pleased

(19)

with what their father had done — with one exception. Of the material
things of domains and merchandise and jewels each had plenty and
was satisfied. But when it came to the inmates of the seraglio, both
brothers looked with desire on the lovely Juari and wished to possess
her for his very own. Thus desire for a lovely woman started the
fraticidal feud which sowed discord and unrest in the great Inca country
and precipitated a cruel civil war for supremacy. This conflict raged
with varying fortunes until Atahualpa managed to capture Huascar and
put him in chains. But Atahualpa enjoyed his triumph for but a brief
time. At this point Pizarro with his band of bold Spanish adventurers
landed on the shores of the fabled land of gold.

Here a word as to Pizarro is necessary. The year 1519 found him
in Panama and past fifty years of age. He had been in the New World
twelve years and was still a penniless soldier of fortune. Yet in his
mind a colossal scheme was taking shape — nothing less than to lead an
expedition to explore an empire. Evidence as to the existence of this
golden empire was very strong. Tales of Indians had led early Spanish
explorers on many a wild goose chase, such as quest for the Seven
Cities of Cibola, the Big Gold Coumry to The Northwest, the Fountain
of Youth, which were always poquito mas alia (a little farther on). How-
ever, Pizarro had more to encourage him in his undertaking than had
Ponce de Leon and other Spaniards in their quest. The Indian princess,
Falvia, common-law wife of Vasco Nunez Balboa, told her husband of
a great sea beyond the mountains, and of a fabled land of gold more
than one hundred suns to the south which lay on its shores. This tale
of a fabled golden land was certified to by one of Balboa's Indian guides
who made a clay model of a llama. Inspired by such evidence, Balboa
set out and discovered the Pacific in 1513, taking possession of the same
in the name of the Spanish sovereigns. Then he started the huge task
of building four brigantines in which to sail to the fabled land south-
ward. The building of the ships required four years of arduous toil.
Finally all was in readiness for the voyage. Unfortunately, Balboa went
to Darien on business before making the trip, where he found that
he had been supplanted as governor by Pedro Arias Davily. Balboa
was importuned to set aside his Indian wife, Falvia, and marry the
new governor's daughter. This he stubbornly refused to do. Even
before Shakespeare wrote the immortal lines, hell had no fury like a
woman scorned. The governor and his daughter connived to have
Balboa arrested on a trumped-up charge, rushed to trial, condemned,
and executed. Thus perished the noblest and most brilliant of all the
Spanish Conquistadores.

Now Pizarro was with Balboa when he discovered the Pacific Ocean
and had naturally heard all the stories of a land of gold to the south.
He was fired with ambition to be the one to lead an expedition in
search of it. But to outfit an expedition funds were needed. At this
point he contacted Almagro, a fluent and convincing talker, and they

(20)

agreed mutually to promote such a voyage and to share equally in all
its profits.

Mainly through Almagro's efforts, funds were raised, end soon
thereafter Pizarro set sail in the boats built by Balboa for the fabled
land of gold. The almost incredible story of how a handful of bold
Spanish adventurers conquered one of the world's great empires has
been told too often to need repeating here. Needless to say, Pizarro
would have failed to triumph if it had not been for the division of
interests among the Incans themselves. On November 16th, 1532, he
seized and imprisoned Atahaulpa, demanding from the Inca an immense
ransom in gold for his release — enough gold to fill a room twenty-two
veras by seventeen, as high as he could reach. Immediately, Atahualpa
ordered his usbjects to gather and bring in the requisite ransom.

From the temples of the sun, from hidden treasure houses, from
many mines, over narrow mountain passes, by foot and on the backs
of patient llamas, the loyal Incans brought to Pizarro untold wealth
to buy the freedom of their chief. In the designated room gold, which
would subsequently stabilize the tottering throne of Spain and lay the
keel of the mighty Armada, grew higher and higher. Meantime Atahualpa
brooded in his confinement, and it came to him that perhaps the Spaniards
might dispose of him and raise his brother Huascar to the throne, so
he secretly ordered his generals to put Huascar to death, which they
did. Meantime, Pizarro and Almagro quarreled bitterly over the division
of the enormous treasure of gold. In most all the upheavals and out-
bursts of people, when the war drums beat loud and fervor and enthu-
siasm run high, the under-dog furnlsnes the head for the battle-axe
and bears the brunt of the battle. In this case, while many thousands
of natives met death without the least idea as to what all the turmoil
was about, the pot boiled over. Atahualpa had his brother strangled
in his prison cell; Pizarro had Atahualpa garroted and Almagro beheaded.
Then Almagro's son, at the head of a small band of men, assassinated
Pizarro. Later, a friend of Pizarro slew Amagro's son. So went the
bloody drama of conquest and death, of jealousy, hate, and avarice, and
it was out of this seething maelstrom of human passions and conflicting
factions that the solid gold image of the hidden Sun God emerged as
part of the treasure of Peru which was to find its way to a hiding
place in the soil of Texas.

Among Almagro's crew was a sub-officer of the gay, swaggering
toreador type who managed to possess himself of the lovely Juari. She,
on her part, fell madly in love with him, and knowing the terrible lust
of the Conquistadores for gold divulged to her lover the exact where-
abouts of the hidden golden sun god and other articles of the same
precious metal. This fellow and six of his cronies seized the image
and kindred treasure — only to find that they had a white elephant on
their hands. They knew that little enough of this enormous wealth
would be alloted them if they turned it over to Pizarro, so they debated
long and earnestly how else to dispose of it. They were full-fledged

(21)

adventurers, inured to hardships and danger, and the enormous weatlh
represented by the image of the sun-god and other articles of solid gold
was enough to make them risk anything for its retention. Thus it was
they decided to desert Pizarro's band and flee northward. They could
not hope to enter Darien or Panama to ship for the old world without
having their treasure confiscated and themselves put to death for seeking
to defraud the crown. Further north than those places, however, was
Mexico, and futher again, land where ports might be found and trans-
portation to Europe obtained without having to answer too many em-
barrassing questions. Equipping themselves with horses brought over
from Spain and what camp supplies they could obtain, the little band
secretly set out on the long hazardous trek northward.
And what a journey that must have been!

Beyond the boundary of the Incan Empire no roads or trails existed,
only rugged mountain peaks, pathless jungles, and fever-infested swamps.
Hostile Indians, wild beasts and venomous snakes were encountered. The
day by day details of this terrible journey are unknown. Some of
the adventurers fell by the wayside and the survivors interred their
bodies in shallow graves and then toiled on.

Did the lovely Juari attempt this journey with her swaggering lover?
And if so, did she meet death in some lonely mountain glen or dismal
swamp? Was the Indian superstition fulfilled, that to show gold to
the white man brought inevitable disaster and death? No one knows.

As their numbers dwindled, the adventurers recruited friendly Indian
guides. I have always marveled at the ease with which the Spanish
Conquistadores could obtain the aid of Indian guides willing to start
on long perilous journeys of hundreds of miles. Maybe centuries of
sameness had aroused in the Indian's soul a longing for change, for
an experience foreign to anything he had hitherto known. Be that as
it may, the little band had no difficulty in enlisting the services of
Indian guides, when they were needed.

Northward, ever northward they toiled. Countless miles of untold
hardships now lay behind them. At any moment they might stumble
on camps or outposts of their kind. Before that they must discover
some kind of a crucible wherein to melt down the golden sun god image
and run it into ingots.

Still further north, they heard, was such a place on the banks
of a river, and for this crude smelter they made with the energy of
desperation. Sickness and battles with hostile Indians wofully depleted
their numbers. According to the legend, only one of the group of
adventurers survived to reach the smelter location.

Was this survivor the swaggering, truculent fellow who had bewitched
the heart of the lovely Juari? As to that, we can only speculate. But
if it was he, he was worn and weary now, with the malignant malarial
fever gnawing at his body. Yet he was still hopeful, his tenacity and
cunning had not forsaken him, though he and his Indian guides were
hard pursued by warlike Commanches.

(22)

On reaching the site of the old smelter, he instructed the guides
to dig twenty-one holes, seven veras deep, and then in the still hours
of one memorable night, he crawled painfully forth and dropt the golden
image of the sun god, together with the other golden articles, into one
of these holes. Over the golden treasure he threw enough dirt to cover
it from view, and in the other holes he threw the same amount lof
dirt so that all twenty-one looked alike. Then at day-break he had
the guides fill in the holes and as nearly as possible conceal all traces
of their existence.

It was now impossible to tell which hole contained the treasure. None
of the guides knew or cared, since they did not realize the value of gold.
Shortly thereafter, the lone conquistadore succumbed to the fatal malady
racking his bones, the Indians scattered, and only the legend survived.

Then after three and a half centures had elapsed, a certain individual
with a bump of curiosity and acquisitiveness, heard this story and be-
came deeply interested in it. He visited foreign capitals and delved
into old archives; then he hurried back to Texas and bought in fee
simple the land on which, according to his information, the gold treasure
was hidden. He set to work to locate and excavate the twenty-one
holes. Ten of them he actually found and cleaned out to the bottom.
In one of these holes he found articles identified as Inca trinkets. But
the hole containing the image of the golden sun god was never located —
and nothing quicker cools the ardor of a treasure hunter than perspira-
tion at the end of a pick -handle. He decided to take a rest; and his
rest — so far as digging holes after sun gods is concerned — has continued
to this day.

But through all the years a watchman has guarded the treasure
site day and night, and it was this watchman who told me that a fifty-
fifty contract would be entered into with any one who could demonstrate
possession of a geophysical instrument capable of locating gold seven
veras deep.

In one of the holes which I examined was an old Bois D'arc ladder
ready to crumble to pieces — a ladder constructed without nails!

And there it is, a fabulous treasure on the banks of the Brazos
river in Stonewall Co., Texas, far from the highways of commerce,
hard by the old smelter and arrasta site, awaiting the call of the Doodle
Bug.

c&he Lost Ledge of the Lone cAce ^Desert "T^xt

The story of the Lone Ace Desert Rat demonstrates the old cowmen's
saying, "Luck of the dogie; live through a hard winter and die when the
grass rises."

For over forty years the Lone Ace had been prospecting the desert
reaches of Arizona and Nevada looking for the pot of gold at the rain-
bow's end.

(23)

It seems that the Lone Ace never did have much luck. In each
new strike the other fellow always got the rich claims. The Lone Ace's
locations would prove barren. His rich veins petered out as shallow
pockets and his stringers would "pinch out" entirely instead of getting
richer and richer with depth as they sometimes do.

But at last success perched on his banner, his luck changed and
he struck it rich — enormously rich. One day he came into camp from
a prospecting trip and announced jubilantly that he had located a won-
derfully rich ledge — one he believed would prove more than a pocket;
a bonanza which should abundantly repay him for all his disappoint-
ments, hardships, and wanderings over the waste places for four decades.
However, he decided to return to this discovery and dig and test and
make certain of its richness before filing papers or opening negotiations
with any one for a set-in. So with this much said, he packed his
burro one morn and disappeared into the desert — never to return; search-
ing parties were unable to locate his remains.

Some time after this, I was again in the vicinity of Skull Valley
and ran into an old friend who told me the sequel to the disappearance
of the Lone Ace Desert Rat.

It seems that two old-time prospectors went out into the region
at the north end of Big Bug Mesa, near Lynx Creek, within a few miles
of the Bullwhacker Mines, to do a little prospecting. They were camped
on the side of the Mesa one night, and were about to roll into their
blankets when the wind shifted and blew from the north, bringing
with it an odor so terrific as to convince them that , something dead
lay in that direction. Half in earnest, and half jestingly, the men agreed
that the odor was the ghost of the Lone Ace Desert Rat hovering about
and that it must be his body lying to northward that gave rise to the
terrible stench. However the wind shifted again and they were able
to pass a fairly comfortable night, though towards morning whiffs of
contaminated air blew over their camp, reminding them that what
they were pleased to term the ghost of the Lone Ace still haunted the
neighborhood.

They broke camp at the first streak of dawn and started out to
learn what really caused the unpleasant smell. The tainted air was
sufficient guide and they had not gone a quarter of a mile before they
came upon the body of the Lone Ace's burro. From its unsavory con-
dition they judged it had been dead for some time. But the peculiar
circumstances under which the burro met its end was what rivetted
their attention. Evidently, whilst travelling alone down a small ravine, the
burro tried to pass between two good-sized palo verde trees standing
close together and the huge load of gold ore he packed had become
wedged in such a manner that he could neither go forward nor back.
There he stood, upheld by the wedged load, and without question had
perished of hunger and thirst. No one could guess as to how long
he had hung there between the fatal tree trunks, slowly dying, but it
was plain that he could not have been dead more than a month. The

(24)

two prospectors later marketed the three bags of ore for quite a fabulous
sum, considering the small quantity, which proved that at last the Lone
Ace Desert Rat had struck a million-dollar ledge. But where was the
Lone Ace — and where was his ledge?

To answer the first half of the question, it seems plain, from the find-
ing of the burro's body, that the Lone Ace had perished somewhere in
the mountains after loading his burro and starting back toward civiliza-
tion. Whether the old man fell down a cliff, broke a leg, and died a
lonely miserable death at the scene of his rich find, or whether he had
been the victim of a heart attack which took him off in a second as he
tramped along behind his faithful pack-animal, will never be known,
but the latter explanation seems the most probable.

As to the latter part of the question, the prospectors who stumbled
on the burro's body cached the three bags of ore in a safe spot and
started out to hunt for the body of the Lone Ace Desert Rat and his
rich ledge. They searched far and wide, looked in every steep and narrow
gorge they could locate, and spent many aays combing and recombing
that part of the country, but were never able to discover the remains
of the Lone Ace or to find any trace of the ledge the rich ore came
from. Finally, they abandoned the search. To this day, the source of
the Lone Ace's rich ore is a mystery; but one theory, of course (as in all
cases of this kind in the Southwest), is that he stumbled on one of the
old hidden mines of the Indians. After he had loaded his burro with
selected picture rock containing free gold in abundance (rock estimated
to be worth $2000 to $5000 per ton), the Indians caught him, and either
did away with him or spirited him over the border and down into the
Yaqui country of Old Mexico.

It seems that some one with the ability to call up the spirits of de-
parted mortals might get in touch with the spirit of the Lone Ace Desert
Rat or that of his faithful burro and find from them a way to trace the
back trail to the source of those three sacks of rich gold ore. But I am
not a believer in the claims of those who say they can talk with the
dead and will leave that method to others. However, it would make a
mighty fine summer vacation trip to go over into Yavapai county, not
far from the old Bull-whacker mine, and look for the Lone Ace Desert
Rat's lost ledge.

©id Tass doubtful

On the lonely summit of Old Pass Doubtful at the base of Apache
Lookout, near the Arizona and New Mexico state line, stands a monu-
ment to the memory of John J. Giddings, erected as a marker of his last
resting place. He and five others were massacred by Apache Indians on
April 25th, 1868.

Pass Doubtful was so named because it was doubtful whether you
would get through it or not. The pass was in the heart of the Apache

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country and at that time was considered the most dangerous point on the
old Butterfield Trail. The Butterfield Trail, as you will perhaps remem-
ber, was the southern route of the overland stage, in 1858 and for many
years thereafter, from California to the east.

The east-bound stage left old Fort Bowie on the morning of April
25th, 1868, with five passengers in addition to the driver and expected to
reach old Fort Doubtful on the east side of the Divide at noon, or a little
after, of the same day. But at midday, it seems, at the foot of Apache
Lookout, the stage was suddenly attacked by a considerable band of
Apache Indians. The driver immediately dashed the stage coach into a
shallow arroyo and all hands set to work throwing up a breastwork of
boulders and dirt behind which to entrench themselves for the best de-
fense possible against their savage attackers.

All six men were well armed with rifles and revolvers and had
plenty of ammunition. Throughout the afternoon, they managed to
ward off attack after attack and at nightfall, as was their custom, the
Apaches withdrew. But the savage onsets of the Indians, though beaten
off, must have exacted a heavy toll, for when the Apaches renewed the
attack the following morning they encountered little or no resistance.
A rescue party sent out when the srage Became many hours overdue at
Fort Doubtful found four naked bodies behind the breastworks in the ar-
royo, together with the dismantled stage coach and various other items
of rubbish which had not appealed to the Indians; and at some distance
away, the bodies of the other two men, also naked and partially eaten by
coyotes. Sorely wounded, they had evidently crawled under cover of
darkness to where they were found. The rescue party assembled and
buried in one shallow grave the bodies of the six unfortunate men. When
I visited the spot some years ago, the wooden slab had fallen and was
lying down at the side of this grave, all writing on it effaced by the
elements. But later, many years after the massacre at the foot of Apache
Lookout, Giddings' daughter erected a monument at the head of it, and
there it stands today. The inscription on the shaft reads as follows:
"John James Giddings, Born June 30th, 1821, Killed by
Indians at this place, April 25th, 1868."

Now three of the passengers on the ill-fated coach were known to
have been enroute to their old homes in the East with considerable gold,
the proceeds of their work in the California gold fields. One of them
possessed a bag containing $30,000 in gold nuggets; the other two pos-
sessed smaller amounts. The total amount of gold carried by the five
passengers has been variously put at from $30,000 to $75,000, none of
which was ever recovered. As has been stated, the rescue party from
Old Fort Doubtful found the bodies stripped naked and the coach looted
by the Indians.

But it is fairly certain that the Apaches knew nothing of the gold
carried on the stage, and that neither did any of the members of the
rescue party; therefore it remains a mystery to this hour as to what be-
came of it.

(26)

We may presume that the driver of the stage and its five passengers
hoped to escape the Indians since a company of the dragoons was sta-
tioned at Old Fort Doubtful only a few miles away to the other end of
the pass. As they fought to stand off the Indians during the afternoon,
they probably expected the arrival of a rescue party at any moment. But
as night came on and help failed to arrive, it is reasonable to suppose
that they would make preparations to hide their bags of gold where, if
able to crawl away and make good their escape during the night, they
could later return and recover it.

I have talked to an old lady who has lived in the vicinity all her
life and whose people were in the country at the time of the tragic hap-
pening. She has substantiated this tale and is of the same opinion as
myself, that the gold must be buried somewhere near the grave of these
men, since they could hardly have dug a hole very far from the breast-
works in the arroya to hold it.

If the gold was hid there at all, it is bound to be in the arroya but
i few feet from where they made their last stand.

23en Sublett's Lost Placer oMines

For centuries and centuries, the Star-quenching Angel of Dawn, as
he swept with broad, slow wing across the vast expanse now known as
North America, saw the Gaudaloupe Peak much as it stands today.

To me, this is the most sublimely beautiful and majestically austere
of any mountain I have seen. I lived awhile in a small valley on the east
side of this range.

Each morning when the first streaks of daylight began to mark the
outline of the eastern horizon, I would call to mind the song of the
Psalmist, "When morning lights the eastern skies, Thy mercy, Lord, dis-
close," and with the last lingering ray on the western rim I was reminded
of the catacombs of the Caesars in which the body was laid, with the feet
to the west, symbolizing the pagan belief, The life is ended, the sun is set.

Gjaudaloupe Peak! There it stands! A mighty sentinel, as non-com-
municative as the Sphinx of Gizeh, towering near the Texas-New Mexico
state line. It was in a foothill gulch of this grand old peak that Ben
Sublette found his fabulously rich placer — the famous Lost Sublette
Placer Mine.

Most of the details for this story came to me from people who knew
old Ben Sublette and who helped him spend some of his cash; folks
who had listened with awe and avarice to his tales of Midas Wealth.

Ben Sublette was a married man who originally lived in Colorado
where he was none too prosperous and had begun to accumulate a large
family. An old Indian told him that at the foot of the Gaudaloupe
Mountains his tribe had washed out gold, and lots of it. This informa-
tion gave Ben Sublette a mild form of the gold fever and he moved his
family to Texas with the avowed intention of searching for this gold. He

(27)

located where the town of Odessa now stands and his family made the
best living possible by working for neighbors on the ranches in that
vicinity and by keeping boarders while the railroad was being built
through the region. But the most of Ben's time was spent exploring
the foothills at the south end of the Gaudaloupe Range in search of the
rich deposits of gold he believed were hidden there. When Ben started
out on one of his prospecting trips, he would ask the neighbors to look
after his family, with the result that most of the people of West Texas,
who knew old Ben at the time, erroneously considered him more or less
demented. Old Ben Sublette got to be somewhat of a jest in that region.

For two years he continued his prospecting trips, without apparent
success. While on his trips he lived principally on antelope, jackrabbit,
and other wild game. During this period he had no financial backers
or grubstake partners.

There is little doubt but what the Spaniards and Mexicans of long
ago knew about the Lost Sublette Placers, and quite likely the old Indian
who told Ben Sublette of the rich deposits of yellow metal was a member
of one of the tribes that wandered over this region.

One night about sundown, Ben Sublette created a sensation by com-
ing into a railroad end town with a supply of pure gold, in the form of
coarse nuggets, that he had evidently taken from the rich placer ground
for which he had been searching so long. Ben rushed into a saloon at this
railroad end town and loudly announced that the drinks were on him,
that he treated the house. Much to the amazement of the bartender and
everybody else, he planked down a large sack of gold nuggets. He was
almost wild with excitement over his bonanza discovery. He waved his
disreputable old hat and shouted that he had fortune by the tail now,
that he was going to make up to his family for all they'd stood for and
suffered whilst he hunted the gold.

But alas, Old Ben Sublette, like most everyone who strikes it rich,
had a host of fair-weather friends. Though he made frequent trips into
the mountains and always brought back a goodly supply of gold nuggets,
those friends saw to it that he never saved enough money to keep his
family in luxury. He kept it in comfortable circumstances, no doubt,
but never laid a cent by for a rainy day.

Many people tried to persuade him to show them the location of his
placers, but he always avoided doing so with one excuse or another. On
one occasion he entered into a contract with a group of business men to
capitalize his gold mine and put it on a commercial-producing basis. The
business men agreed to furnish a certain amount of capital if he would
show them his mine, so they started out, loaded down with provisions,
camp equipment, and a generous supply of hard liquor. But the expedi-
tion only got as far as Old Jack's Camp north of Pecos when Ben Sub-
lette took seriously ill and had to be taken home. He swore someone
had tried to poison him and the business contract was allowed to expire.

The only one Old Ben Sublette ever took to the source of his gold
nugget wealth was his nine-year-old son. The lad went with his father

(28)

but once and was too young and heedless at the time to note all the
twists and turns of the trails and canyons his father traversed. They
had arrived at the place (or rather, at a mesa above the placer ground)
late in the evening and made camp. The next morning Ben Sublette
produced a rope ladder and, leaving the boy at the camp, used it to de-
scend an abrupt cliff. About noon, he reappeared with a bag of nuggets.
As the son remembered it, this cliff was by the side of a very deep and
narrow gulch or canyon; but when some years after, with a brother-in-
law, he tried to locate the spot, it was without success. The lad said it
took his father about four hours to make the descent to his gold placers
and to return with the bag of nuggets.

According to a man who lives in Pecos and has carefully studied the
utterances credited to Ben Sublette and the topography of the Gauda-
loupe country, the Lost Ben Sublette Placers are in the vicinity of a point
eight miles north of Rustler Spring. However that may be, no one has
yet located the placers; but it seems a very fascinating project for the
undertaking of those who delight in beautiful mountain scenery, the ro-
mance of the old west, and the prospect, if they are lucky, of becoming a
millionaire.

c&he Lost 'Dutch Oven oMine^

To any one at all in tune with the universe, there is an indescribable
fascination and charm in the desert: especially is this true at eventide in
the early Autumn. The stars seem to come down so near that you can
almost reach them. They twinkle and blink with a strange alluring
witchery. The old lady who undertook to sweep back the rising tide of
the ocean with her broom, could as easily dust off the Milky Way. Close
at hand the stillness is punctuated by the hyphenated whine of the coy-
ote, and far off, by the lonely scream of the mountain lion. On such a
night as this, when the campfire is crackling with iron-wood and mesquite,
and the prospectors' pipes are lit, they love to spin tales of lost mines;
and along with the Lost Peg-leg, the Gunsight, and the Bryfogle, always
comes the story of the Dutch Oven.

I have spent a lot of time in the vicinity of the Lost Dutch Oven
Mine, skirting the foothills of the Clipper Mountains and roving through
the vast country to the south and west.

This is real desert, where "the sun comes up like thunder." But the
rising of the sun is preceded by a glamorous moment of short duration
when the entire horizon is emblazoned with a halo which can only be
likened minus the streamers, to the Aurora Borealis of northern lati-
tudes. This phenomenon is especially marked just before a terrible desert
windstorm.

But to return to the Dutch Oven.

The man who discovered the Lost Dutch Oven Mine, unlike the desert
rats that found and lost so many mines in the Southwest, was a scientific

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man by the name of Schofield, a water engineer employed at the time in
sinking shafts and running tunnels in likely looking canyons of the Clipper
Range to develop a water supply for the Santa Fe Railroad. One Sunday
he took a jaunt by himself into the mountains, and, while leisurely wan-
dering along at the foot of the Clipper Range, came upon a sizeable
spring in a gulch he had never before visited. He drank at this stream
and then noticed a dim trail leading further into the mountains. Curious
as to where it would take him, he followed the trail over a small ridge,
then over another, and finally, through a somewhat deeper canyon, where
tie lost it. All this took some time; but Schofield had been surprised to
find a spring in such an arid region and was curious as to where the dim
trail could possibly lead. Doubling on his tracks, he ultimately reached
a spot where two huge rocks towered upward with barely room between
them for a loaded burro to pass. Then he rounded a large black rock
and saw the camp.

It was an abandoned camp — he saw that at once — lone and desolate.
The tent pole stood up, naked, save for shredded strips of canvas flapping
in the breeze. For quite a time Schofield could only stand and stare.
Then he went forward and examined his find.

An old decaying mattress stood in one corner of the tent-space; scat-
tered around were mining tools, pieces of steel; perched high up on the
side of the black rock, so as to be out of the way of predatory animals,
was a box containing dry and rotted foodstuffs. A trail led away from
this forlorn place to a shaft sunk in the earth. A sagging windlass
spanned this hole. It didn't need the mining tools, or the piled-up ore
dump, to inform Schofield that here was a mine — an abandoned one by
the looks of it — and all the tales he had heard of lost mines flowed
through his head. But he could not recollect ever hearing of one in con-
nection with this particular mountain range. Eagerly he examined the
ore. It was unbelievably heavy, seamed with gold. The rope on the
windlass was too rotten to bear his weight, but he knew that the ore he
handled could only come from a tremendously rich ledge below.

Imagine Schofield's emotions. From all indications the former owner
of this mine had perished leaving no partners or associates to claim title.
There were millions — literally millions — in precious metal to be taken out
of this hole in the ground and he, Schofield, would own them all!

Night came and found him still in a daze. To follow the dim trail
after dark was impossible. He made a fire and with his back to the
huge black rock passed the night without food or water, but with a pile
of ore on which to feast his eyes as it glinted dully in the firelight.

At sunup, he again examined his find and made selections from the
finer pieces of ore to take out to an assayer. But whilst making a last
survey of the camp-site (tent-space), he tripped over an object which, on
close inspection, proved to be the cover to a large dutch oven imbedded
in the earth. He lifted the cover off the dutch oven and then started back.
If he had been amazed at the discovery or the abandoned mine and rich
ore dump, he was now too astonished even for exclamation. There were,

(30)

probably, millions of dollars in gold in the mine shaft, thousands in the
ore dump, but to actual gold in the bulk, however small, there is some-
thing which takes away a man's breath.

And this dutch oven was crammed full of gold. Gold nuggets, flour
gold, wire gold, and pieces that had evidently been picked out of string-
ers in the shaft. With protruding eyes, Schofield loosened the sand
around the dutch oven and tried to lift it, but it proved too heavy to
budge. He heaved and strained. In vain. Then the thought occurred
to Schofield that little would be gained if he could lift the dutch oven. He
could not hope to pack it far and it was safe enough where it was and
would await his return. So he covered it over and left it. But not be-
fore he filled his pockets with handfuls of the precious stuff and tied
up samples of ore in his bandana handkerchief. Then he trudged over
the dim trail to the spring, left the canyon, and made his way to the little
station of Danby. By this time he was hungry and thirsty and he never
dreamed of fixing his landmarks more clearly in his head or of marking
the way. Besides the route seemed so simple to follow; merely a matter
of crossing the desert to the canyon mouth and the spring, following the
dim trail to the ghost mine. So he thought, eager to reach civilization.

One of his first acts was to throw up his engineering job with the
Santa Fe Railroad and go to Los Angeles and San Francisco to have his
ore assayed. There he cashed in on the free gold, acquired a partner,
and equipped himself to return to the lost mine and extract its riches.
But the "simple" way of return could not be found; the canyon "easy" to
locate eluded his frenzied search. Never again was Schofield to lay eyes
on the sizable stream, the dim trail, or on the ghost camp with its fabu-
lous fortune in an old dutch oven and in the bowels of the earth. Its
location has vanished from the knowledge of men, but nonetheless it lies
out there, in a canyon of the Clipper Range, hard by an old ghost camp
at the end of a dim trail, millions in gold — waiting — waiting — for whom?

©he Lost cArch Tlacers

Due south of the Dutch Oven, in the Turtle Mountains, lies the Lost
Arch Placer. Fish discovered it one day, thirsty, tired, whilst searching
the northern end of those bleak, gulch-corroded hills for something even
more precious to man than gold — water.

Prospecting in the Colorado River country, he and Crocker cut across
the desert from the Colorado River into California. They had camped at
the Colorado to water themselves and their two lean yet hardy mustang
horses. But on leaving the Colorado River they did something almost
incredible for desert rats such as they to do — they failed to fill their
water-barrel with the life-giving fluid so plentiful in the Colorado River,
so lacking out in those bleak wastes of parched sands and barren moun-
tains where they were going. When the two prospectors struck camp the
second night after leaving the river and went to make coffee, this over-

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sight was discovered. They stared at each other aghast. Only two small
canteens full of water were left them. They asked themselves if they
should make for the Colorado River or try to locate water in the sun-
blistered lonely Turtles upon whose slopes at certain places a little vege-
tation could be seen. Failure to find water in the Turtles would mean
an extra day of travel to reach the Colorado but they decided it was
their best bet.

They separated. Crocker went up one canyon and Fish another. In
a gulch opening off a canyon he followed Fish came upon an arch, a
natural bridge of rock spanning the gulch from side to side. In the
sandy sink-hole beneath this natural bridge, no water lay, but Fish's prac-
ticed eye examined the mineral aspects of his surroundings — such is the
power of habit, even when a desert rat is facing death from thirst

Then it was he made the astounding discovery that the sands on
which he had stretched himself were golden sands and that a breath
of his lungs could blow away the latter and leave precious nuggets and
flour gold of surpassing richness to shove into his pockets.

Thirst momentarily forgotten by the golden wealth upon which he
had stumbled, Fish ran to tell Crocker about it. But Crocket, with
parched tongue, only cried: "Of what use is gold to us now? Water, man,
water! We must make the Colorado or we're done for!"

This outburst sobered Fish. They had now but a single canteen of
water left, and with this meager supply they set out. The water was gone
the first day and after that it was delirious hell — swollen tongues, heat-
haze dancing and shimmering— but they made the Colorado. They
plunged into its turgid floods and drank and drank. Crocker became vio-
lently ill and Fish had to tote him down to old Ehrenberg ferry and get
him across the river to the little town of Ehrenberg. Here Crocker died,
and here Fish himself lay indisposed for awhile. When he recovered, he
tried to go back to his discovery in the Turtles, but he couldn't remember
details. Where had he and Crocker crossed the Colorado? Was it really
the Turtle Mountains they had been in or the Old Woman Range of hills
which resembled the Turtles? Though he tried and tried, Fish never
again found his lost placers and people began to think of his discovery
as a myth, scarcely more than the delusion of a heat-crazed imagination.
Then, years later, came Peter Kohler.

Peter Kohler was something of a naturalist as well as a prospector.
While wandering through the Turtles, he was much struck with the
uniqueness of a natural arch of rock which spanned a gulch. Then under
the arch he found gold — gold Fish had found before him but which he
had been fated never to rediscover.

It sometimes seems as if Nature is jealous of yielding up too lavishly
her treasures of gold to the greed of men. To raise the grubstake neces-
sary to develop his find, Kohler went to work unloading mine timbers at
a little place called Amboy near Needles. One day a heavy timber slipped
— and the only man who knew where Fish and Crocker's Lost Arch
placer lay had his life crushed out!

(32)

A man named Packer, who had entered into partnership with Koh-
ler, was no quitter. For years he searched intermittently for the mine,
utilizing the few hints as to its location Kohler had let drop — but the time
was wasted.

Yet out there in the north end of the sun-blistered Turtles, far up
some lonely canyon, in a gulch to the left and under a natural span of
rock, lie fabulous placer sands saturated with almost pure gold — waiting —
waiting to be rediscovered.

•

Emperor cfflCaximillian's juried fortune in Silver
Tlate and Silver Ingots

This story was told me many years ago by an old-time citizen of Pe-
cos, Texas. He was a very substantial and reliable man and believed
every word of the narrative himself regarding the Emperor Maximillian's
immense fortune in court plate and silver ingots which is held to lie bur-
ied in Texas. He wanted to show me the location of the bonfire, where
the wagons, harness and camp supplies had been burned. He said he had
gathered up the old wagon irons and wondered in which direction and
aow far the enormous cache of silver ingots lay from that spot. I said I
would look into the matter as soon as I could find both the time and a
geophysical instrument of real merit. But this man passed on before I
located such an instrument. However, the story of Maximillian's buried
Silver is based on enough fact to induce me to set it down here.

Maximillian, ill-fated Emperor of Mexico, was rather a mild-mannered
man of vaccilating character who was placed on the Mexican throne by
Napoleon the Third, and by certain interests at the court of France that
were friendly to the family of his half-demented wife, Charlotta of
Austria.

As Emperor of Mexico, Maximillian spent most of his time studying
court etiquette and instructing his attendants in the art of approaching
and retiring from the imperial presence. He never seemed to realize the
type of people he aspired to rule over in Mexico. Now President Andrew
Johnson looked with disfavor upon Maximillian's activities and soon after
he was established on his shaky throne the French army withdrew. This
withdrawal gave great impetus to the movement of the patriot, Benito
Juarez, who was daily gaining recruits to march against the Emperor's
army. About this time Charlotta went to France and to Rome soliciting
old world support and influence in the effort to keep her husband on the
throne of Mexico.

Despite the need for consistent and firm policy under turbulent con-
ditions, with constantly increasing discontent among the natives, Maxi-
millian had no fixed plan of action. One day he was on the point of
fleeing the country, the next he had dreams of riding at the head of a
large army to put down every form of opposition within the Empire. He

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needed and used all the gold he could secure to feed and equip his army
and to support his luxurious court; but he possessed a large quantity of
silver ingots that could not so easily be converted into things he wanted.

According to the story, on one occasion when he had an outburst of
the mania of leaving the country incognito to protect his life, he loaded
all of this immense store of silver ingots and very rich and priceless court
plate brought from Austria into five large wagons and, placing the treas-
ure traine under the care of a trusted officer of his army, started it towards
the Rio Grande with the idea of eventually loading it aboard a ship at
Galveston for transportation to Europe.

This huge cavalcade of treasure reached the Rio Rrande river at
Ojinaga, crossed the river and drove into Presidio, Texas. When it reached
Presidio, the teams were exhausted. The trusted officer in charge in-
quired as to the best route to take to get to Galveston. He was informed
that the best and safest lay by way of Horse Head Crossing on the Pecos
River, thence to old Fort Concho, and from that place to Galveston, via
San Antonio. But he was also told that outlaws infested even the safest
of roads north. The close of the war between the states caused many
desperate men, whose home-ties had been broken by the conflict, to
flock into the Indian Territory and the Big Bend Country of Texas. But
the trusted officer was confident he could get his treasure train safely
through. Besides there could be no turning back now no matter how
dangerous the journey ahead.

How he chanced to make the acquaintance of the three men who
proved his undoing, it is impossible to say. They were of the desperate
disbanded-soldier type mentioned above. The officer employed them to
act as guides to the cavalcade as far as San Antonio, at which place he
would be in entire safety. He told the three guides that the wagons were
freighted with provisions of no great value; but the care with which the
wagons were guarded, the fact that the canvas coverings were always
fastened securely down, coupled with the heaviness of the loads which
taxed the strength of the horses to the utmost, aroused their suspicions.

One moonlight night, just after crossing the Pecos River at Horse
Head Crossing, one of the guides succeeded in raising a wagon's canvas
covering and was astounded to find it loaded with silver bars and shiny
utensils of various shapes and sizes.

He immediately communicated his discovery to the other two. Re-
member, those were men hardened by years of bloody war, human life
meant little to them, and they were not squeamish about a few murders.
Besides the sight of so much treasure to be had for the taking, might well
have tempted more peaceful men to violence. Be that as it may, the
three guides acted with a grim determination worthy of a better cause.
They fell upon the sleeping officer and his men and incontinently butch-
ered them. Then, embarrassed by the possession of untold wealth which
they dared not take openly into any city or town, they buried the treas-
ure near the scene of their crime and reduced what they could of wagons
and harness to ashes.

\

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From the little that can be gleaned, one patches the story together. It
seems that after burying their loot and burning the wagons, they decided
to go east to rest up awhile and give time for any inquiries concerning the
missing cavalcade to subside, after which they would return and dig up
the treasure. But at old Fort Concho one of the three took violently ill of
an old malady. His companions left him at the Fort and proceeded towards
San Antonio. Before reaching their destination, they had the misfortune
to get involved in a fracas which ended their chequered careers. Thus
but one man was left alive with any knowledge as to where the fortune
in silver lay buried.

According to all accounts, he recovered somewhat from his illness.
Not sufficiently to hazard the hardships and dangers of going back after
the buried silver, but enough so as to make him attempt to reach his
old home in Missouri. However, near the boundary of Texas and Okla-
homa, he suffered a relapse and there gave up the ghost. Before cashing
in, he told some one the story the old gentleman in Pecos related to me.

And there you are. The silver has never been found, but there can be
little doubt of its existence. If any one wants to take a chance on finding
its burial spot, I can tell him this: The old wagon irons alluded to in this
story were found about 15 to 20 miles east of Horse Head Crossing, in the
Antelope Hills, on the old Fort Concho trail.

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